would be the vengeance required at his hands. Constance, too,
seemed to apprehend the commission of some deadly crime, as she threw
herself imploringly before her father.

"Save them,--oh, save them!--their strife is mortal!"

He shook her from him with a glance of abhorrence, and the maiden fell
heavily on the floor. He was preparing to enter when the door flew open,
and a form rushed through in the gaudy apparel of the officer. He leaped
on the floor, and, ere Holt could utter a word, he heard him descending
the stairs with great precipitation.

"Whom hast thou concealed in thy bedchamber?" inquired the almost
frantic father. Constance sat on the ground, her head resting on the
chair beside which she had fallen. She wept not, but her heart was full
even to bursting.

"What is the name of thy paramour?--Thou hast been somewhat eager,
methinks, to accomplish thine own and a father's disgrace?"

This cutting address roused her. She replied, but in a firm tone--

"A stranger,--an exile. Misfortune appeals not to woman's heart
unalleviated. He threw himself on my protection; and where the feelings
own no taint, their purity is not sullied,--even in a lady's
bedchamber!"

A glance of insulted pride passed over her beautifully-formed features.
It was but for a moment. The agony of her spirit soon drank up the
slender rill her feelings had gushed forth, and she stood withered and
drooping before the angry frown of her father.

"Surely, 'tis not the rebel Tyrone that my daughter harbours in the
privacy of her chamber? Speak!--Nay, then hast thou indeed brought an
old man's grey hairs to the grave in sorrow! Treason!--Oh, that I have
lived for this,--and my own flesh and blood hath done it. Out of my
sight, unnatural monster. Dare not to crawl again across my path, lest I
kill thee!"

"O my father! I am indeed innocent." She again threw herself at his
feet, but he spurned her from him as though he loathed her beyond
endurance. Boiling and maddened with rage at the presumption of this
daring rebel, Holt, forgetful of his own danger, seized the light. He
burst open the secret door; but what was his astonishment on beholding,
not the hated form of Tyrone, but the officer of justice himself,
gagged, pinioned, and deprived of his outer dress. The cap and mantle of
Tyrone, by his side, told too plainly of the daring and dangerous
exploit by which his escape had been effected.

The outlaw, soon after his enlargement, findi